APRIL 10, 2019

Clear day. Moderate temperature.

For an overview of the hive body we used check out the Apimaye site. 

I was leaning toward traditional wood hives, but the Apimaye are well insulated, so we gave them a try.

INSPECTION  -  HIVE 2

My coworker and I inspected the hives and tried to figure out what had gone so wrong.


First we pulled out the bottom board. It looks there was a mite problem.  :(

Here's a close up of a couple mites from the above image:

We found some webbing, as well. It looks like the webbing I saw when I had wax moths in another hive.

We took off the Hive Top Cover and examined the dead bees.

Here's a close up of the dead bees:

The frames had a gray tinge--mold?  The hive had plenty of circulation, so I don't know how that could have happened.

Here's a closer look at one of the frames of gray honey comb:

Some of the cells had little holes in them.

Since we had some of the frames pulled out of the hive, we peeked in and saw some dead bees in the bottom. I would expect some dead bees from the winter season, but I'm not sure how many would be considered normal.

There are some large supercedure cells in the upper part of the frame.  Supercedure cells are one of the methods for paving the way for a new queen. Check out some reasons for a colony to make a new queen.

Could there have been mites, wax moths and mold? Well. that's a lot to go wrong in one hive, I think. Next I'll upload the pics from Hive #1.